


Promises to Keep

by luchia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 19:45:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luchia/pseuds/luchia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel obeys for as long as he can, as well as he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises to Keep

“Christ, how can you even see?” Dean asks him, and grabs one of the dishcloths from the counter and wipes the blood from his eyes. It’s just enough for him to get a good look at Dean, cough out his name as the brothers lift him from the wreckage.

“You sure he’s-” Sam begins.

Dean gives him a shaky laugh. “Come on, Sam, I think I can tell Jimmy from Cas,” he says, and absently waves away Castiel’s hand when he tries to hand the pitiful piece of cloth back. “No, you hold on to that,” he says, the words a soft command as they navigate out towards the car, a kind of command he’s never been given before.

He obeys. The cloth’s still in Castiel’s back pocket when they find his body, nearly a thousand years later.

 

He shivers once in the winter. It has nothing to do with the weather, but it’s shocking enough that Dean’s eyes widen and he moves away. “You cold?” He tries to say _no, it’s something else_ , but Dean’s not paying attention, already turning away and opening up the trunk. “Of course you’re cold, it’s negative ten and you’re standing around in the same outfit you wear in summer.” He pulls something out, a couple paper packets attached to each other with obvious perforation between them, and starts shaking them, giving Castiel a firm look. “These are like tiny heaters. I want you to put them in your pockets, and if you get cold you put your hands in.”

Dean hands them over, and Castiel does as he says, rips them apart to put one in each coat pocket. When Dean gives him an expectant look, he slides his hands in and can’t help but be surprised by the sudden heat in his fingers.

“Right.” Dean looks uncomfortable, and Castiel wants to ask him _what’s happening to us_ , wants to touch him with the same heat Dean’s provided, but Dean swallows and shoves his own hands into his pockets. “Well. Those only last for a few hours at most, so if you get cold again just come find me or Sam or…well. Okay, promise not to hurt my baby?”

It takes him a moment to realize Dean’s baby is the Impala, understand how much he genuinely loves his car, and he nods.

“Alright, I trust you,” Dean says, and points at him. “You get cold, you look through the trunk for those things, okay? Usually back right corner of the cache.” When Castiel only nods, Dean scowls at him. “Promise me, Cas. I don’t want you getting frostbite or something.”

“I promise,” Castiel says sincerely. “And I’ll watch over your baby.”

Dean’s smile is crooked and sincere and, if Castiel dares think it, touched. “Thanks. I like not having to worry about muggers.”

It’s more than muggers. In two hundred years, she’ll be sitting pristinely in an old basilica, fully fueled. In nine hundred, when ice coats the earth for two years, Castiel opens her trunk and looks in the long-empty cache’s back right corner, just like he said he would.

 

Sam shifts feet awkwardly, swallowing before he nods to himself and holds out a foil package. “Okay. You’ve been using protection, right? For…um. For Dean?”

Castiel looks at the determined, embarrassed look on Sam’s face as he takes the foil from him. He’s blushing more than Castiel has ever seen his brother, which is strange considering he likes to think he has the honor of seeing every side of Dean that he ever could hope to. He nods. “I promise I’ll use protection.” For Dean.

They mock him the first time they see him in battle after that, scorn him for the thin necklace with three protective symbols wrought in cold iron, for the bracelet with six more on it, each of a different material he’d consulted with a surprised Sam about. The actual shield he carries earns him outright disdain. It makes him slower, more cautious, and at the same time more precise. They stop mocking him when he comes out of battle after battle with an impressive body count and even more impressively unmarked body.

He protects himself for as long as Dean lives, and even longer after that, his memory seared into his actions so deeply that he never considers doing otherwise.

 

“Don’t you dare die before me,” Dean says into Castiel’s shirt, close to tears. “Not you, not Sammy, nobody.”

Sam dies seven minutes after Dean, and Castiel likes to think he can feel their gratitude for centuries.

Castiel exists much, much longer.

 

He learns what it was that made him shiver, learns why Sam referred to a condom as _protection_ , learns that the feel of Dean’s hands and mouth against his shirt doesn’t always have to be desperate and scared. He learns to give his own gentle commands, ones that are directions instead of orders. He learns about everything that is Dean’s, down to Dean’s incredibly great-niece and how she happens to find herself sheltering from the snow in a worn out basilica with a glimmering black machine inside it, right next to a man wearing outdated clothing and a tired smile that emerges from the backseat just for her.

“Who the hell are you?” the last Winchester asks many, many years after he met Dean.

“Dude, quit introducing yourself as an angel of the Lord,” Dean would shout when he did.

A thousand years has made him tired. Eight hundred years without heaven has made him exhausted. Nine hundred and forty-three years and seventy eight days and fifty thousand and four hundred seconds without Dean has his heart tired and his mind ever lingering on what was the blink of an eye for his brothers.

“I’m someone who loved your incredibly great uncle very much,” Castiel answers.

She gapes at him, but still removes her coat. It drops to the ground in a soppy mess, already creating a pool of water beneath it. “Get out.”

He nods, closing the Impala’s door. “You’ll be safe here,” he says. “Any Winchester would be safe here.” He said he’d protect Dean’s babies, and Uncle Dean’s nieces and nephews were his babies just as much as their father’s.

She gives him a look of utter disbelief, a look that Castiel can tell is bordering on trust, but he’s tired. She said to get out of there, and as ever, he obeys.

He obeys as long as he humanly can.


End file.
